“That makes sense.” I knew men would say damn near anything in bed. It was an old trick to use women as spies, but what information could be worth that much in this time? It seemed like clean water was more valuable than anything else, but there was a lot left to see. I’d only been in one corner of a great fried desert, so my conclusions were flawed at best. “What kind of secrets?”
“Mostly about trade and the city. It’s too big for one person to control, and there are a lot of smaller posts around it in a circle. Scavengers bring news of finds, and tribes on the move, even war, but everything comes back to keeping the caravans safe. If the goods get through without much loss, people like Wetterick gets richer. When he gains power, the city gets stronger, and people like me get pushed a little farther out from the rewards. He can charge for things like water, safety, and even the right to use roads that are older than anyone can remember. Lady Silk knows things before Wetterick, and people trust her, even if she is a snake in fine threads,” she said. “The creature thinks she’s a spider in her web, and that all threads run to her.” Mira’s lips turned down in an angry curve, and I felt mine do the same.
“Do you want to go to the post tonight?” I asked. The moon was already high enough that it would be easy to travel. Deserts were better at night, but I didn’t trust the Empty. Not after burying Bel.
“In the morning. Can we stay with her tonight?” Mira asked, staring at her sister’s grave. The rock soared above us on either side, funneling a breeze past. It was cooler now, and the desert had gone silent except for an odd howl in the distance.
“We can, and we will. I’ll make camp. You stay here, watch over her,” I said as Mira’s shoulders rounded with relief. It was best to let her grieve in her own way. You could never shape anyone else’s pain, not if you wanted them to be free of it later on.
Together, we sat watching as the stars wheeled overhead. In my head, I wrote a list of things this world needed. Things I could do to help.
And to harm.
Mira fell asleep against me, her body soft and warm. I could feel her breath on my neck, steady and restful. In the morning, I would change my mission. Survival was fine, but it was a losing bet. We would go to the post, and I’d look for an opportunity to assert force from outside the system like we’d done in the small villages during my years in the Marines. One crack in their walls, one chance would be all I’d need to punch through and find a way to keep this woman safe, along with other people I’d never met.
Like me, the post was about to go through some changes, and I knew right where to start.
7
An hour past dawn, we walked together through a silent desert, Mira lost in her thoughts as we put distance between ourselves and Bel’s grave.
“How far to the post?” I asked, handing her a skin after a long drink. The sun was already punishing; climbing high and white into the unbroken blue sky.
She looked ahead, hesitation on her face. “It’s close, but...we should see traders by now. I don’t know where everyone is.”
The road, if you could call it that, was empty. It was a glorified cart path, two ruts cut into rough desert, dotted with broken pottery and other travel discards, curving slightly west into the distance. A smudge on the horizon told me we were close to the post—it couldn’t be more than eight clicks away at most, but even straining my eyes I saw little activity.
“We approach slowly,” I said. We had shit for cover and nowhere to go in the event of an attack, but luckily, the road was clear. Despite my reservations about traveling in the open, it was better than the desert sands, where I couldn’t predict what might come boiling up out of the dunes with teeth bared. I weighed the odds, drew my blades, and waved Mira forward. “You look ahead. I’ll watch our backs.”
It was another klick before I saw a definite sign of life, or what had once been alive. Bones, wet with bits of meat and gleaming in the sun. A fresh kill, and an animal I recognized. Human. The skeleton had been torn apart, femurs cracked and cleaned like chicken bones in an alleyway. The skull was in two parts, brains missing and the jaw hanging wildly in a gruesome imitation of laughter. A broken sword lay in the dust nearby, along with the remains of a boot. There was little else except bone shards and what might have been a belt.
“What did that?” I asked. I’d seen men blown apart by artillery, but nothing this personal. This was the remains of prey, and the scene left my stomach churning.
“Could be any manner of beast, but this close to the post? Wetterick has patrols, and the desert creatures have mostly learned to fear us. They’ll attack caravans but not on the road. Too risky,” she said.
“They learn?” I asked.
“They learn or they’re hunted down and hung from the gate as a warning to the other creatures. Wetterick is a pig, but he’s not stupid. He knows how to send a message to the monsters, and they’re smart enough to get the point.” She kicked at a rib with her boot, and the bone fluttered with color. “Oh...that’s not good.”
I knelt to peer at the broken ribcage, or what was left of it. Green and gold fabric hung on the bones, smeared with rusty gore from one or two days in the punishing sun. “A uniform?”
“Wetterick’s men. That’s their colors. Lady Silk and her house wear red.” She said, looking sick, and I didn’t blame her. Flies hummed merrily as we passed through the strewn remains, returning to their dwindling feast as soon as we moved away. Mira’s eyes were round with horror, but she held her knives with a steady hand. Together, we moved on, and I let my eyes roam across the expanse of sand and rocks, looking for anything that twitched.
“Vultures?” I asked, seeing the familiar lazy forms of three birds, high up and well ahead. A quick estimate told me they were less than a click outside the post itself, which was now rising into a discernible series of shapes. There were buildings, a tower, a wall—all things I knew to be civilization, or something close to it.
“They’re waiting for something,” Mira said. Her lip curled in disgust, and I agreed with her sentiment. Vultures were necessary, but that didn’t mean I had to like them. I’d seen a vulture start eating well before its prey was dead. Something was very disturbing about the helpless look in an animal’s eyes when it knows what is happening and can do nothing to stop it.
We walked on, and the prey became apparent. He was slumped over, a leg bent at an angle that was never meant to be, his hands moving weakly toward a waterskin just out of reach. His uniform was green and gold.
“Wetterick’s man?” I asked, wondering why he’d been left alone this close to the post. If it were a patrol gone wrong, surely someone would have seen him. At this range, they could hear him. I peered into the post and saw the distinct outline of men on the wall. They were watching us, bows raised. The shine of sunlight off a lens told me they had a scope of some kind. My senses went into overdrive, and I put a hand out to stop Mira from going any farther. The man faced away from us, sandy hair moving in the breeze.
“Slowly,” I said, my voice low. In the distance, I could see a caravan leaving from the other side of the post, then a second set of wagons appeared. Business as usual, just not on this road. Not where we stood, less than ten meters from a soldier who was in trouble.
I drew a blade and called out. “Turn to me if you can.”
He twitched but said nothing. He was pinned under a fragment of rock, reddish and ancient. Swirls of fossilized shells gleamed white in the stone, bright in the sunshine. A spray of bloodstained several layers of the stone. Slowly, the man lifted his hand and pointed to the left, indicating a pair of rocks the size of haystacks. He brought his finger to his lips, then put the hand back as if he’d never moved.
On the breeze, I heard a noise. Somewhere between a grunt and a cough, followed by a wet sound that could only be feeding.
“A beast,” Mira whispered.
My second blade came out even as I began to circle wide. We couldn’t get into the post without tending to the man, and that meant finding ou
t what was on the other side of the stones. I began to approach, waving Mira forward. We knelt next to the soldier, and his eyes were an ocean of pain. It wasn’t just a broken leg. He had a gut wound, open to the air and running him dry of blood and everything else a person needs to survive. He was already dead, and his tight smile told me he knew it.
“Still,” I whispered, but he shook his head, and even that made him go pale with agony. Around thirty, he looked tough and capable, even if on the verge of passing out. In his hand, he held a folded sheet of paper, smeared with blood but legible. When he passed it to me, I understood why the road was abandoned, and caravans were leaving in the other direction.
Mira took the paper as a bone snapped behind the rocks, followed by a squeal of delight. Marrow was hard to get to, and the animal sounded pleased.
“Hardhead?” Mira asked. “New to me.”
She looked at the wanted poster, a crude line drawing of something between a man and a rhino scrawled in bold black lines. Dead or Alive. 1000 Imperials, Payable by House Wetterick. In the drawing, Hardhead grasped a club in one hand and a skull in the other. I thought it was subtle given the noises coming from around the stones.
Looking back, I know when my ‘bots are talking to me because tumblers click somewhere in my head, revealing a truth that I need to continue my life here in this time. Holding the poster of Hardhead was one such moment. The sun was on my face, and I looked at beautiful Mira, her lips parted in thought as she waited to see what I would do. The nameless soldier took his last breath, eyes going soft as his patrol ended, and the pieces began to fall into place.
In order to get inside the post, I would need some juice. Hardhead would provide that, along with coins and a claim to be heard in a world that desperately needed someone to bring order to a starving time. I was never a crusader, but I detest evil and the casual nature of mindless violence. It’s the opposite of what soldiers do, and in that grunting shitbag named Hardhead, I had a chance to take a massive leap forward.
If I could use my new body the right way.
Standing, I swung both knives in looping arcs, letting my muscles take their measure all over again. I bent my knees, feeling every fiber in my legs as they flexed and coiled and released, and it took everything I had not to say some cowboy shit to Mira, kissing her like I was headed off to the O.K. Corral.
Instead, I smiled at her. “If I fall, run.”
“I can fight,” she said with eyes flashing.
“I know you can. That’s why you need to be ready on the right if it breaks to run. I’m going in hot, no need to give the bastard a warning,” I told her.
Pride intact, she smiled with the acceptance of someone under heavy fire but with nowhere to go. “Go. I will be ready.” She nodded to the rocks, unsure if there was anything else that needed to be said, but there wasn’t, so I crouched slightly and began stalking around the enormous boulders with my blades at the ready.
Being a Marine, I’d never thought of myself as a swordsman, but the heft of each length of steel felt good in my hands, and I let the tips move in a circle before bringing them to a completely still posture. I wouldn’t waste energy with flash or form. All I cared about was a quick kill, and whatever made that happen was a success. I’d worry about style points later, in front of Wetterick and anything else that didn’t eat humans for fun.
Creeping around the enormous rock, I saw a boot moving rhythmically, kicking a small furrow in the sand.
Then the boot stopped rocking, jerked forward, and fell back with the foot still inside, detached and leaking blood into the ground. A deep, bass growl greeted me, and I lifted my nose to smell the wind. I’m no bloodhound, but the stench was so powerful it brought tears to my eyes. Somewhere between stale piss and hot blood, the creature’s aroma nearly melted my face like I’d seen the Arc of the Covenant, despite being told to look away. Saliva flooded my mouth, and a sour taste rose to greet my teeth, but I fought it back and realized that Hardhead already knew I was coming.
He—she, it, whatever—bellowed like a mad bull, throwing a partially eaten ribcage into the air and surged into motion from around the stone. I knew something that size would probably have a turn radius like a city bus, so I flattened to the rock face and crouched, knives at the ready in hopes of a sneaky cut as the creature rushed past. There are no fair fights, there’s only winning and losing, and a standup fight with something that ate people sounded like a short trip to becoming dinner.
I was right. Hardhead was neither human nor animal, falling somewhere between in the dusk of nightmares. Tall, overpowering, and covered in black fur, his head crowned with six horns, his nose the seventh, and where bony plates would be on an actual rhino, he had teeth like a cartoon shark. His hands ended in black claws, the edges sharp and gleaming in the sun, wet with gore from the poor bastard still smeared across his chainsaw of a mouth.
He was twice my height and had an absurd little gray tail that wagged as he tried to turn, once his beady eyes sighted me clinging to the rock face. A rooster tail of sand shot from under his feet as he dug hard, reaching out with his left arm to swipe at me with those claws.
The invitation was clear, so I accepted. With one slashing stroke, I took off his left hand at the meaty wrist, rewarding me with a howl of pain that shook the air in my lungs. I followed up by lunging at his right leg, delivering a long gash to the bulging muscle just above the ankle.
I hadn’t said a word, but a smile crept over my lips as I saw all that gorgeous lifeblood spiraling out of Hardhead’s arm. Pressing my advantage, I made to greet him when he finished coming to a stop, thinking that the best fights were always over in a hurry.
Hardhead had a different idea.
He dropped to his good hand, turning in a circle with quicksilver speed to lash out in a donkey kick that tore my right blade away, grazing my shoulder with enough force to split the skin under my borrowed shirt. I say grazed because my ‘bots were humming at full speed, lending me the kind of urgency I needed to get the hell out of the way of that killing blow. Rolling to a sputtering stop, I fought a groan, as bolts of agony shot through my body. Hardhead might have been huge, but he was also fast, angry, and mobile. I shook my head to clear it as the monster held on to his stump, wailing into the sun with his mouth thrown back like a grieving widow.
Hardhead’s mood turned from bad to worse. Lowering his head, he charged, and I backpedaled due to my healthy sense of self-preservation. In the brilliant sun, his gray fur had dark stripes that did a lot to cover that he was, at the very least, a humanoid. The horns and mouth were showstoppers, but as I drew back my knives, something in my mind said the monster was a cousin to me.
“Hey, shithead! This way!” I crowed, counting on the beast hearing me as he charged.
Hardhead dropped to three limbs, holding his wounded arm up but accelerating like a runaway train just the same. In his bucking gait, he went full beast to greet me with his nose horn, standing at the last second to rake the place I occupied with a vicious swipe of his right hand.
“I’ll take that,” I told him, using my most reasonable tone. With an upward cut, I stole his other hand, then finished the blow by sending my opposite knife out in a flickering cut across the back of his leg. Before his hand could hit dirt, I cut him twice more, once in the back of the leg and a long, shallow wound that rattled over his ribs in a series of mechanical noises. Ichor and blood splashed me, hot and vile, but the big boy wasn’t done yet. He twisted again like he was going for the kick, and I threw myself back in a desperate attempt to get clear.
He brought the horns instead. The bastard lunged forward, blowing snot and saliva while his teeth flashed, a new roar of pain broke free as he plunged his bleeding arms into the sand for balance. His nose horn took me square in the chest, but at a flat angle, so it didn’t puncture my skin. As a knife, the attack failed. As a hammer, it was a rousing success.
Sky and ground were a whirling kaleidoscope on the edge of my vision, my ‘bots dragging har
d at my instincts as I readied myself for a hard landing. I had two knives, two hands, and one chance to land without breaking things I needed, like my legs, or arms.
Tossing my left knife to the side, I went for a one-armed landing in hopes of sticking Hardhead where it would hurt the most, but gravity and his heart did the work for me. When I landed, he staggered, falling forward in a wheezing mess to cough his last breath out on my face, a mere three feet away. The ground shook with his landing, and his arm jabbed me in the ribs, stump grinding against me with a twitching strike. His fur fluttered, nerves sending one last hurrah through his system before the rest of him caught up to the fact that he was truly dead.
“I’ll be damned,” I mumbled, spitting dust and blood from my mouth. “You taste like you smell.”
“Did you kiss him before you killed him?” Mira asked. Sweat sheened her forehead, and she plunged her knife into Hardhead’s neck so casually, I thought she might wink at me.
“Might as well have.” I clambered to my feet, looking at the carnage. There were two hands, a lot of blood, and churned earth all the way around the rocks, along with the remains of several corpses, their tattered clothing all green and gold. “He’s been busy.”
“Ten that I can see. I knew he was done when you took the second hand. Matter of time until he pumped out the last of his fight,” Mira said, trying to be calm but breathing heavily.
She’d been right to worry. My body hurt in places I didn’t know I had, and it would be some time before I drew a full breath. With the stretch of an old man, I limbered up my right arm to finish the business at hand.
“What are you doing?” Mira looked alarmed, searching Hardhead’s corpse for signs of life. To her credit, she made ready with her own blade rather than edging toward safety.
“I don’t know this Wetterick, but he seems like the kind of asshole to go back on a deal.” I brought my blade down on Hardhead’s neck, swinging twice more to part the head from the massive shoulders. Bending over, I picked up the huge head by the nose horn, grunting with effort. “I’ll bring proof.”
Future Reborn Page 6
